Tuesday, October 4, 2011

I like Ryan Gosling. I liked him in The Notebook, Half Nelson, Lars and the Real Girl, and Google Image Search. And driving around LA at night while listening to pop music is my favorite thing on Earth, so seeing Drive was a no-brainer.

WARNING: CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS.

• The opening of the movie is so cool, with the Kavinsky music and the retro font and everything. I'll be happy if this is all that happens for the rest of the movie.

• Ryan Gosling's character reminds me a little of Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, maybe because they're both nameless. But there's also a touch of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man; He doesn't have much personality, he does speciﬁc things with expert skill, and he always has this goofy, savant-like, "I dunno why I'm doing this!" expression, whether he's ﬁxing cars or stomping skulls.

• But maybe I'm just thinking about Rain Man because they both like toothpicks.

• We keep having to second guess what Driver actually does. He's a getaway driver. Now he's a cop! Wait, now he's a stuntman ... and a mechanic! Now he's a U.S. Marshall and a bounty hunter! Now he's a beauuuuuuuutiful lady!

• I can tell this theme song, "A Real Hero," is going to be stuck in my head forever. It's really good and catchy, but the lyrics are sung by a girl with weird standards when it comes to what makes dudes worth singing about. "You have proved to be a real human being!!! And a real hero...and a REAL HUMAN BEING!!!" Maybe she's dated a lot of robots?

• The costume department did a good job of making "the Driver" look really, really cool.

• But I think they could have gone a little further and given him a couple more accoutrement ("accooltrement?"):

• Brian Cranston is as craggy as Albert Brooks is puffy. This is like watching an english mufﬁn talk to a marshmallow.

• "Cranston & Brooks" sounds like a brand of marmalade I would spread on an english mufﬁn. They should do a marketing campaign for Thomas english mufﬁns and talk about their "Brooks and Crannies."

• There are surprisingly few exciting driving scenes in this movie, but I'll try not to be a baby about it because I can always watch something dumber and with a higher VRRRROOOM! factor later. 2 Fast 2 Furious? Or Crank 2? Oops, gotta pay attention now, the main characters are falling in love.

• Carey Mulligan is adorable and a ﬁne actress, but her character is basically "pretty bug waiting around to get squished."

• Aw man, Christina Hendricks is only in this movie for like two seconds! "How you gonna ﬁt all them titties into two seconds?" is what the weird asshole part of my brain just thought.

• Shit is getting incredibly violent now. I just heard a "whoosh!" as the entire audience reached up to cover their eyes, and then a collective gasp and wave of laughter as everybody tried to recover from whatever the fuck we just saw.

• Albert Brooks just killed Cranston by slicing his wrist open, but at least he was really nice about it?

• I had to go get some blood tests done a couple of hours before the movie, and unlike Brian Cranston I was a total spineless wiener about it.

• Al Brooks just whipped out a collection of the prettiest knives I've ever seen. We've already watched him stab a bunch of people, but now we know for sure that kniﬁng is his thing.

• Now the audience is roaring with laughter because Driver is continuing to wear his scorpion jacket, even though it's soaked with blood.

• Being nameless is the coolest. From now on, all of you can just call me "the Drawer."

• It's hard to make fun of this movie, because everything seems really deliberate and smart. Gosling and the director, Nicholas Winding Refn, seem totally in control of how each choice they made will be perceived.

• Fun Fact: Nicholas Winding Refn can't drive; he failed his driver's test EIGHT times and never got a license. So, he made a movie about the thing he's the absolute worst at.

• My boyfriend just said, "My ultimate movie would be a remake of Drive, starring Andy Serkis as a stoic, unnamed getaway chimp." I usually say no when he asks me to draw stuff, but, for obvious reasons:

• In conclusion: This movie references a million other movies and it's super stylized, like a less-campy Tarantino ﬂick. It's also a ton of fun. I give it 5-out-of-5 Goslings!

Lisa Hanawalt lives in Brooklyn and does illustrations + funnies for publications like the New York Times, McSweeney’s, Vice, and Chronicle Books. She’s best known for her comic book series I Want You.

@shenannies I believe the dog's name is George, and I am in love with him. Look up the video of Gosling on Jimmy Fallon; George is a special guest star, and his haircut/wardrobe choices are explained, adorably.

@shenannies uh how did you so casually drop that you saw Ryan Gosling in PERSON??? Jealousy is pouring out through my every orifice (gross).

I haven't seen Drive yet (hopefully this weekend) but I have to say that I am so happy that Ryan Gosling is the subject of an article on The Hairpin! It's catering to the interests of my cooler, more mature self but also to my 14 year old celebrity obsessed self. Except I'm mostly still the 14 year old. Lesbihonest.

@emilylouise I know, right?? my bff is like "ryan gosling is not enough to see a movie about cars" and i'm like "listen to what you just said" and she's like "i'd rather see 'what's your number'" and i'm like "WTF!"

So basically he's only a couple of accoutrements away from being Hunter S. Thompson.

Also, Crank 2 is my go-to movie whenever I'm all "This movie is good and all, but I was promised a guy shooting himself out of a cannon with two machine guns per fist in order to bring the fight to his mortal enemy, the moon, which killed his entire family of pet squirrels during the last eclipse."

If anyone is on a Nicholas Winding Refn kick after seeing Drive, you should totally check out Valhalla Rising. I mean, only if you like movies about Vikings who may or may not have floated down a river to Hell and are now going insane and killing themselves. And there's a lot of no one talking and I guess we're just supposed to read their beard braids for emotional cues? And also Mads Mikkelsen, Danish cheese danish of my heart, is in it.

I loved Drive and can't stop thinking about it and that drawing of Ryan Gosling on a skateboard with a saxophone and the "Hey Girl" parrot is possibly the best thing I have seen in a long long time and I kind of want to print it out and frame it.

God I loved this post! Has anyone else read the short novel Drive was adapted from? It's by James Sallis and it is excellent- different from the movie (violent but not ultraviolent, less "pat") but equally good.

Basically I had the same reaction to the end of the book as I did the end of the movie, which was to stare into space for a good 30 seconds thinking, "Damn. Wow. Damn. Wow. Damn."

Did anyone else HATE Drive?! I kept giving it so so so so so much benefit of the doubt, because, like, Ryan Gosling! Christina Hendricks! Albert Brooks! Bryan Cranston! It has to get good soon, right? But no, it is the plot of every crime movie, good-hearted criminal just wants to do his crime in an inoffensive and competent way, until he falls for a girl, and then things get Complicated, and myah myah myah. And oh my god in the end, when (SPOILER ALERT) they stab each other? That is when all the benefit of the doubt I had been giving the movie collapsed like a mound of Ryan Gosling's 246 toothpicks, and I thought, UGH.

So in conclusion, your drawings made me feel much better about hating Drive, but still, someone please affirm that they hated Drive as much as me!

I hated Drive but loved every moment of this post! Especially the scorpion's smile, but also your boyfriend! It's weird, because I love stylized Tarantino violence and I love Ryan Gosling but I did not like this movie. It was no fun at all. Zero fun. A great disappointment!

This was a great post, but I have already burned my scorpion jacket. The movie was nearly the worst I've ever watched. It was unbelievably cliche, and I think I knew what was about to happen at every instant, except for the extremely out of place and over dramatized kiss in the elevator. Props on the baby goose with the sunglasses and toothpick...

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